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Communicating Persuasively, Email or Face-to-Face?
Jeremy Dean writes "Our intuitive understanding is that face-to-face communication is the most persuasive. In reality, of course, it's not always possible to meet in person, so email wins out. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Persuasion research has uncovered fascinating effects: that men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Women, however, may respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more 'relationship-minded'. But is this finding just a gender stereotype?"
ask the Airline industry, we invent all these ways to communicate over vast distances, VOIP, Telephone, IM, Email etc etc and people are flying to meet each other more than ever
The more technologyically-friendly one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more details-oriented one is, the easier it is to persuade them by email. The more "frat boy and golf games" on is, the harder it is, typically, to persuade them over email.
I am, therefore you think.
Can't we do science without worrying about whether we're hurting someone's feelings? This is just getting ridiculous.
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When I am writing something personal, I always end up over analyzing everything I write. I sit, rewrite, write it again, delete it all write again and it just seems to never end so it sounds "perfect."
At least for my personal life I like face to face because I am forced to be more "genuine" and say what pops into my head.
Media have characteristics. Messages have characteristics. It is best they work in harmony.
For a concrete example, I usually avoid communicating a complex controversial idea verbally. It's too confrontational and recepients may miss key points or react too early and get themselves locking into an unnecessarily contrary position. Beter they read and react in private, then calm down before replying.
In person is very good for using body language when sincerity or other emotions are important components of the message. Phone is not quite as good, but often a very workable intermediate.
But I certainly don't consider in-person to be any sort of "gold standard" in communications. Too many different messages.
What do you do if you suck at persuasion face to face? Or simply talking, for that matter? When I write an email I'm able to think about what I say before I say it and rearrange things after the fact if it comes out wrong. Can't do that in conversation, you have to get it right the first time, and know exactly where you're going and how you're going to get there before you start. Been trying for years, but simply can't. What then? In my opinion a good email would be better than a bad face to face impression.
Face to face time is certainly important, but I'm always amazed at how differently people remember conversations, and how quickly people forget key parts of those conversations. Without some sort of record, it's hard to pin people down on what actually transpired. Email is less personal, but at least you have a written record.
For important things, you always have to follow up the conversation with an email just to keep things straight. (unless you're in politics, then you should never use email so you won't get caught in your lies)
I hear ya there, and used to feel like I was in the same boat. Practice makes perfect though -- the more f2f time you get, the more refined your skills become.
I am, therefore you think.
it's face/face communication that wins almost every time.
Sales pitches and closing a deal is easiest in person. Next on the phone. Almost never via email exclusively - but does happen.
When you're trying to sell something, be it an idea or a product, most of the time the person you're selling the idea or concept to could get something that will work from anyone. What you're selling is confidence that you will be able to deliver, implement, whatever. It's much easier to communicate genuine confidence in skills, product or ability with other cues besides words - be it voice inflection, posture, facial expression, etc.
No rocket science here.
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I don't understand the need to type everything as a stereotype, especially when it comes to gender equality. Nature shaped man and woman into two different things. Why is it automatically a stereotype and "bad" when research comes out that says men communicate better via e-mail, and women face-to-face? No one is saying it applies to all men, or all women, nor are they saying that people cannot transcend their natural tendencies.
You'll see similar over-reactions to studies that say men are better at math. No one will actually debate the study, it's just a bunch of people stomping their feet like children saying "I'M AS GOOD AT MATH THAN YOU, MR. MAN!" No one is saying you aren't, the study just found that overall, men were better at math. That doesn't make women inferior, that makes them different, that's all. Yet when studies work out the difference of parenting, for instance, between the genders, you'll see women commenting that "Well, obviously we're better at parenting!" I realize that the genders haven't been on an equal playing field for long, but some people (on both sides) aren't exactly making it easy.
It's not gender discrimination or stereotyping issue unless the information is used for nefarious purposes, such as firing a woman from a 10-year career as an accountant because the HR director read that women were worse off at math when compared to men. Grow some balls, or something.
I dislike calling coworkers. Partly because it requires them to drop what they're doing, which seems a bit rude. Fortunately where I work I can usually just wander over and talk to people.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, email is for anything with >1 day deadline, face to face is for anything urgent or unexpected. (i.e. asking for a favour).
I don't mean to disparage what you're doing. I'm a freelancer myself and I love to see people going for it on their own, so good on you and I wish you continued success. But keep in mind you're doing web work for grad students. That's pretty different from doing development for a large corporation, law firm, nonprofit, or otherwise churning business entity.
I may be dealing with a generation gap in a sense - most of the people I provide services to are a good bit older than I am. But even if they do use email all the time, have blackberries/treos, etc. they still want face-time or at least phone time to initiate most things, especially if it's large scale. Sometimes small projects get done over email, but it's almost always repeat or add-on work. This might be different if I was working for a person who grew up with or puts more clout in the technology.
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A man might be more easily persueded by another man over e-mail, but nothing can beat the viscerally persuasive power of a woman with a low cut top and short skirt.
I use email for anything where you need a document trail, and for communications that can lead to a resolution in one or two rounds of messages. I use phone calls, IM, a handwritten note, leaving documents on someone's chair, or face-to-face for anything else. "Anything else" includes most things that matter. For example, giving feedback via email is generally not optimal.
The ancient Greeks taught their ambitious young men (not women, those were even more sexist times than we're in now) logic and rhetoric. Both were necessary in order to be effective. I learned to be more persuasive and more effective at emotionally engaging with my coworkers and customers because people are not solely motivated by logic when making decisions. Even people who regard themselves as entirely rational. There were far too many times when technically correct decisions were stymied by other concerns that were emotional in origin. It's one thing to know the right thing to do. It's entirely another thing to convince other people that it's right. People are judging you all the time, and part of what they're judging is your conviction, your confidence, your sense of urgency, their impression of your ability to make something happen, and whether you're such a pain in the ass that they don't want to deal with you even if you do get things done. In business (as opposed to peer-reviewed journals) all those things matter, and initiatives fail if the chemistry is wrong. Even in peer-reviewed journals, reviewers are responsive to the reputation of the authors and social interactions influence review outcomes.
So sometimes you need to use irrational means to achieve rational ends. And that's because we are not machines, we're social. We need to engage on more than just the level of logic, even though we're in a business where logical decision-making is necessary.
It's also worth keeping in mind that people work, think and interact differently, so email might work well for one person but face-to-face is the best way to interact with someone else. These simplistic "works for men, not for women" conclusions are too shallow to be actionable.
The principle I follow is to over-communicate, never to rely on a single communication channel when communicating anything important, and to learn what works best for different people.
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of course, most of those expensive training courses suck, but that's an entirely separate issue.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
It depends on who you are trying to communicate to.
Like the parent post, I find email or text easier to than face to face communication. So, if you want to sell your idea / product to me, then well written technical documentation will get a much better reception than a talkative salesman. In fact, a sales talk from someone in a suit is the best way to put me off.
I've been researching this issue myself and I concluded that the solution is not to let somebody push you towards a quick answer. Things done/said in haste are usually not well-planned. What email does is that it gives you that ability to take your time and think things over; you can do the same in a real discussion by not replying if you don't have an answer. Tell them that you don't know yet, tell them that you need some extra time, but don't talk out of
Many people know this and use this against us - the trick is to force someone provide a quick answer to a question. The person who answers focuses on providing a fast solution, rather than providing an optimal solution - this is where we lose. I also have to add that those who generate the questions that are 'designed' to knock us down are people who carefully plan their attack. In conversations they can bring up non-essential things that you will waste your CPU cycles on, while they think about their next 'hit'.
Another idea is that you are afraid that the person you're having a conversation with will laugh at you (in the worst case) if you tell them you can't provide an immediate answer. But fear that not, any reasonable human being is understanding and only someone unpolite and ignorant will have something against your taking your time. Personally, I never push people towards making decisions in a rush, I admire those who are not afraid to tell me that they are 'not ready' yet, and I try to avoid those who consciously use this technique as an 'offensive weapon'.
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I'm constantly interrupted at the office, which gets in the way of handling my work. I much prefer when people call, as I can let the voicemail take it and address their question(s) when I have time -- I normally set aside an hour or so in the afternoon. Email is even better, since I check it frequently.
As for people walking over, I have no choice but to be rude to weed out the non-urgent requests. "I'm busy -- is this urgent?" If there is hesitation, or if they dodge the question, I know it's not urgent and I can schedule them for later.
At any rate, walking over to their workspace is worse than calling them. You are effectively demanding their full attention, and the niceties involved in face-to-face waste much more time than a phone call.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai